The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

138 THE THOUGHTS OF vn
stance of the whole ;
and everything formal [casual] is
very soon taken back into the universal reason ;
and the
memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.
11. To the rational animal the same act is
according to
nature and according to reason.
12. Be thou erect, or be made erect (in, 5).
13. Just as it is with the members in those bodies which
are united in one, so it is with rational beings which exist
separate, for they have been constituted for one co
operation. And the perception of this will be more
apparent to thee, if thou often sayest to thyself that I
am a member [/-teXo?] of the system of rational beings.
But if [using the letter r] thou sayest that thou art a part
[icepos],
thou dost not yet love men from thy heart ;
beneficence does not yet delight thee for its own sake ;
l
thou still doest it barely as a thing of propriety,
yet as doing good to thyself.
and not
14. Let there fall externally what will on the parts
which can feel the effects of this fall. For those parts
which have felt will complain, if they choose. But I,
unless I think that what has happened is an evil, am not
injured.
And it is in my power
not to think so.
15. Whatever any one does or says, I must be good,
just as if the gold, or the emerald, or the purple were
always saying this, Whatever any one does or says, I
must be emerald and keep my colour.
16. The ruling faculty does not disturb itself ;
I mean,
does not frighten itself or cause itself pain.f But if
any
one else can frighten or pain it, let him do so. For the
faculty itself will not by its own opinion
turn itself into
such ways. Let the body itself take care, if it can, that
it suffer nothing, and let it speak,
if it suffers. But the
soul itself, that which is
subject to fear, to pain, which
has completely the power of forming an opinion about
1
I have used Gataker s conjecture /caTa^KTiKis instead of the.
common reading Kara\rrimK&s
:
compare iv, 20 ; ix, 42.